BRS Bio Pellets or GFO/Carbon and Cheato

[Woofwoof]

Hey all. Is anyone using Bio Pellets? I couldn't make up my mind about using BRS bio balls in my BRS reactor. Read everything I could find about them and as usual people either loved them or hated them. So anyways I ordered them and put them in my reactor and now my maxi jet just isn't powerful enough to tumble them. My return pump is an oversized quiet one pump that I have gated down. I am thinking of just putting a tee off the return for my reactor, but at the same time I was so undecided on using bio pellets that I'm thinking of just going back to GFO (less work, no plumbing work). I planned on bio pellets with a filter bag with ROX .08 and dumping the fuge/cheato. What does everyone think? Bio pellets and carbon no fuge. Or GFO, carbon, fuge. Looking for pluses or minus for bio pellets. I know gfo/carbon works, but the people who like bio pellets all talk about the amazing color and growth after they dumped the gfo and went with bio pellets. Thanks everyone.

 

[karina97]

I prefer the bio-pellets over the GFO. At first i was using a maxi jet but I had to switch to a mag 3 to get it to tumbe. With bio-pellets I've going several months with needing to replace it. My skimmer is pulling some of the nastiest stuff since I started using bio-pellets

 

[NeverlosT]

all of the above, by that I mean I use all of those things. Still kind of experimenting with the pellets as opposed to the GFO/carbon which do their jobs for sure

 

[Andy V]

Here's the thing. The biopellets will not work on their own if you don't have a nitrate problem. And over time, you will need to add GFO anyway. What do I mean? Simple.

In order for the biopellets to work, you need both nitrate and phosphate. The biopellets use the nitrate at a faster rate than phosphate, thus they become what is called "nitrate limited." This means they can no longer remove phosphate from your water. GFO removes phosphate without needing nitrate, thus it is effective at removing phosphate even when no nitrates are present. For anyone that keeps up with water changes, most don;t have any nitrates, but most would have phosphates without GFO.

I used to use the biopellets, and I personally saw no benefit from them, although other people do. What I am certain of is what I have already stated above. I would just as soon reduce the amount of equipment and electricity I use, and lower the chance of a screw-up by eliminating biopellets altogther, seeing as they will ultimately become ineefective against phosphate anyway.